


portrait of the detective as a young woman

by coffeesuperhero



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 09:37:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/pseuds/coffeesuperhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The truth is, Joan Watson has always loved a good mystery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	portrait of the detective as a young woman

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimers** : This is not for profit, just for fun. All characters and situations belong to Robert Doherty, CBS, Beverly Productions, and various subsidiaries. 
> 
> This was written before "M" aired, so spoilers up through 1x11, "Dirty Laundry." Thanks to Dasha and leiascully for looking this over!

There are books everywhere. They are mysteries, mostly, yellow spines on old hardbacks with blue numbers and letters proclaiming the names of the case files, a neat stack of them piled up in one corner next to a pair of cleats and a soccer ball. 

"Joan," her brother's voice calls, and she reluctantly looks up from the pages of _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_. "Come on, we're going to be late." 

"Five more minutes," she pleads. "I'm almost done." 

"If you don't come now I'll spoil the ending for you," he says, and she clutches the book to her chest as though her fingers splayed against its cover could prevent any information from seeping out before it's ready to be revealed. 

"You wouldn't," she says. 

"Of course I would," he says. "Obviously it was--" 

"Oren!" she shouts, horrified. 

"Mrs. Peacock, with the candlestick, in the parlor," he finishes, laughing. She throws a stuffed bear at him, but he catches it and tosses it back. "Now come on. It'll still be a mystery when we get back from dinner." 

\+ 

School is easy. School has always been easy, and sometimes so much so that it's tedious, but biology is holding her interest. Her teacher, a stern middle-aged woman named Mrs. Brinkman, is generally regarded as the toughest in the school. Students will take almost anything to avoid her classes, and so, of course, Joan had an easy time getting in. 

The B- on her first exam was the first she had ever received in her life, but the A on the second one feels like her own personal Everest. 

"You're very observant, Ms. Watson," her teacher says, studying Joan's notes on their first dissection and nodding her approval. 

She announces over dinner that she wants to be a doctor.

\+ 

The biochem library is packed tonight, but that's no surprise, not with _both_ the p-chem and organic finals only twenty-four hours away. Everyone's cramming, and Joan is no exception. Barely two-tenths of a point separates her from the kid at the top of the class, and she wants that spot more than she wants a good night's sleep. Still, the more students who pile in here the more difficult it is to concentrate, and she needs a change of scenery, she needs less white noise. 

"You're leaving?" one of her classmates asks, looking up from a notebook of scribbled equations with anguish on his face. 

"Yeah, you know, I think I got this," she says, hoping the false bravado isn't too false. She shoves her book into her messenger bag. "See you at the exam." 

She doesn't look back, she just pulls her coat around her a little more tightly and heads straight for the coffee shop to refuel before making her way to the major campus library, where there's a tiny study carrel in the back corner of the fifth floor. Stuck in the middle of books no one ever cares about, Joan has discovered that it's rarely occupied, but tonight she's not so lucky: there's a scruffy-headed, bearded guy sitting at the desk. He's hunched over a paperback, but he doesn't have a laptop or any other books or papers or notes, so she's hopeful that maybe, if she's polite, he'll agree to leave. 

"Sorry to interrupt," she says, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. "Are you going to be studying here all night?" 

"Oh, I'm not studying," the guy replies, looking up from his book. "I'm just reading." 

"Would you mind-- oh, hey, Poirot," she says, noticing his book's title for the first time, her voice an excited whisper. "I've read that one. It's good." 

"You like mysteries?" 

"Yeah," she says. "I don't read much lately, but I used to. I'm Joan," she adds, holding her hand out. 

"Alex," he replies, gripping her fingers briefly. 

She loses two hours to a whispered discussion about the merits of Marsh and Sayers and Christie, but when they're done talking she can't really say she regrets it. 

"Hey, listen," he says. "I distracted you. Take the desk. And if you're gonna be up all night, I've got this stupid trick you can do to keep yourself awake. Better than coffee and cold showers, I swear." 

"Okay," she says skeptically, when he stands up and starts doing squats. 

"I know it looks really ridiculous," he says, squatting down again, "but I wrote twenty-four pages in two days on no sleep doing this last semester. It really works." 

"Where did you learn to do this?" she asks. She sets her bag and coffee down on the table and gives the move a try. She can certainly see how it would get your blood pumping. 

"My parents are fitness instructors," he explains. "Hence the English major. I'm a big disappointment, obviously." 

"Gotcha," she says, grinning. 

Her thighs burn for two days straight, but she passes her tests with flying colors. That two-tenths of a point isn't her problem any longer. 

For graduation, Alex gives her a first edition of _The Gift for 1845_ , which contains, of course, Poe's _The Case of the Purloined Letter_ , and they promise to stay friends, no matter how busy they are in grad school. 

+

Exams are hell. Medical school leaves her no time for riddles other than those posed by the bodies she studies, and she's very, very good at getting to the bottom of the mysteries of the human body, but her own is tired and overwrought from the strain of too many sleepless nights and not enough regular meals. No one understands this misery unless they've been through it; she tries to explain to her parents when they call, but it's useless. Alex tries. Alex sends her old Hardy Boys books and jigsaw puzzles and tells her she should have done a PhD in English instead. 

"My boyfriend hates Peter Wimsey," he tells her in an email. "I don't think this is going to work out." 

"How does he feel about Kurt Wallander?" she writes back, days later, when she finally has a chance to check her email again. 

"Indifferent," comes the reply. 

"Dump him," she advises, but she adds one of those winking emoticons, just to take the sting out of it, make it a joke if he needs it to be one. 

"Old news," he explains, the next time she finds the time to check her email. "If you want to meet the new romantic interest, you have to come to my birthday party. We found one of those old murder-mystery games and you have to come in costume." 

She checks the date on the invite with a sigh; she'll never make it and they both know it. 

She wants to miss the free time she used to have to read, to run, to notice things that weren't Latin phrases or the bones of the hand or symptoms of this disease or that syndrome, but she doesn't even have the luxury of the time it would take to long for all of those things. 

But she'll get back to it. There will be time for excitement again. She has a plan, but there are so many exams to pass between now and then, so many hundreds of squats to do to stay awake. But after all of that is finally over, after hours on her feet in residency, after boards, after a prestigious fellowship, after someone offers to make Joan Watson, M.D., an integral part of their surgical team, she's going directly to the nearest bookstore and buying a stack of cheap paperback mysteries. It's possible she's going to read Sue Grafton's entire alphabetical murder series in one day while _Clue_ plays in the background, and she's going to love every single minute of it.

\+ 

There are exactly seven days left in the time she has with Sherlock Holmes before she's on to the next job, the next client.

She reaches for the book she's been reading, intending to tuck it into her bag, just one more aspect of her time here neatly packed away. But now that she goes to do it, she stops, turning the book over, opening the cover. It's a copy of _The Mysterious Affair at Styles_ , and it's hardly the first time she's read it. The pages are creased; the cover is loosely attached to the binding. Sherlock would no doubt have any number of conclusions to draw from how clearly well-loved this book has been. His methods are not her own, but she has to admit they're useful. 

The human brain is hardwired to find patterns in just about anything, but she can no longer deny that the thrill of the chase has been with her for a very long time, and if she cannot trust herself to practice medicine to satisfy her relentless need to find the truth, then maybe, just maybe, this arrangement is what she needs for now. 

"If I stay, we're getting a housekeeper," she announces, marching into the kitchen without prelude. "And I am not your intern. I've been an intern. I'm not doing that again." 

"Excellent," he says. "And I believe I mentioned the term 'associate' on one of the many occasions on which I told you--"

She holds up her hand, interrupting him. "I know what you're about to say, and don't say it," she says, and he closes his mouth and nods for her to continue. "I will stay here under one condition." 

"Forgive me my brief foray into pedantry, Watson, but adding in the bit about the housekeeper, I believe that makes _two_ conditions, but yes," he sighs, "I will buy more bowls. Although you could do us both a favor and stop eating things that require them. Pastries in lieu of cereal for breakfast, for example." 

"This isn't about the bowls," she says, crossing her arms over her chest. 

"Is it the mugs?" 

"Okay, now you're being deliberately obtuse," she says. 

"I've never been obtuse a day in my life, deliberately or otherwise," he says, and she just raises an eyebrow. He shuffles past her, reaching for another box of files. "Very well, then, say what you need to say, not that it will be much of a surprise to me, as familiar as I am with your personality by now." 

"Personality isn't really deduceable," she says, crossing her arms. 

"Wrong. It is observable and actions deriving from it are therefore capable of prediction," he disagrees, finally deigning to look up from his files to meet her eyes. "And so you will say, 'Sherlock, I will stay here and benefit from your considerable wisdom under one condition, and that is, under no circumstances are you allowed to say, _I told you so_.' Is that not a rough approximation?" 

"The part about you and wisdom seemed a little more like you than me," she says wryly. "And you managed to say 'I told you so,' anyway, so I guess we're done here." It's an empty threat and they both know it. She's even smiling as she says it, and he looks like he's on the verge of having some kind of emotion himself. 

"It was a quotation, that hardly counts," he protests. 

"It's not a quotation if I haven't said it to be quoted!" 

"But you _would have done so_ , and-- ah, yes, Captain Gregson, what a wonderful sense of timing you have," he says, pressing his cell phone to his ear seconds after it begins to ring. "The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art? Yes, of course. Miss Wa-- excuse me, my _associate detective_ and I will see you shortly." 

"New case?" she says, following him to the foyer, where he holds out her coat for her. 

"Indeed so," he says, typing away at the screen of his phone. "Something about a robbery. The museum seems to have lost a statue of a horse." 

He holds up the phone briefly and she peers at it. _Silver Blaze_ , reads the display under the statue. 

"Nice statue," she says, and he tuts at her and hands the phone back. 

"Mind the horse's hooves, if you would, please, Watson," he says, and she stares for a long time, but nothing jumps out at her. He looks at her and sighs. "Consider this your first lesson. I'll explain in the car." 

"About the hooves," she says. 

"Just so," he replies. 

"The game is afoot, huh," she says, and that at least earns her a chuckle. 

"You should be careful," he cautions, reaching for his own jacket and scarf. "You're beginning to sound like me." 

"Bowls and mugs," she says, opening the door. "Or I'm gone tomorrow. You and your _considerable wisdom_ can see to that, I'm sure." 

"That's three conditions, now," he says, holding up three fingers. He gestures outside with his other hand. "But after you, my dear Watson."


End file.
